Chemistry Of A Car Crash
by The Serial Dabbler
Summary: There they were. Overlooked and forgotten, unnatural and supernatural. The ones who should have died and the ones who should have stayed dead. A teen vampire, a moody werewolf and a bumbling ghost should have been a complete car crash, but...it wasn't


A/N: _'All the great crime fighting duos; Holmes and Watson, Batman and Robin, Shaggy and Scooby; they've got chemistry, they had something between them...and I'm not talking about a fat dead virgin.' – Adam._

Let's explore, shall we?

On another note this story was somewhat inspired by Being Human S01 E01, though I'm sure all you avid fans will be able to pick out the resemblances...they're not _exactly_ what one would call subtle.

Rated T: _Again _for obvious reasons, some _mild _swearing.

Disclaimer: I own nothing that bores any resemblance whatsoever to Becoming Human or Being Human for that matter.

Chemistry Of A Car Crash

"You should be nicer to Matt," Christa said offhandedly, hoisting her bag further up her shoulder to button her coat. "What happened to being respectful of the dead?"

Adam shrugged carelessly.

"I'm exempt from that on account of _being_ dead and all."

She scoffed.

"You just get off on being a knob."

"I'd prefer to get you off."

She stared at him flatly.

"You just can't help yourself, can you? Seriously do you have like an off switch?"

A smirk fell across his face as he winked at her.

"You're welcome to try and find one."

She scowled darkly but didn't bother to answer him.

Shoving roughing past him, she stalked away from him and down the empty gravelled path. She had no idea why she'd agreed to this, she should have just said no and gone home. He'd asked her if she'd wanted to go for a walk and she _should _have known after his wisecrack about all dogs being kept on a leash that everything would just go downhill from there. She'd wanted to say no, part of her wished she had, but there was something she'd been meaning to talk to Adam about and she didn't want to risk Matt overhearing...he'd thought they were trying to get rid of him once before.

It was also absolutely freezing.

Adam followed her, like she knew he would, she could hear his unnaturally quiet footsteps as he trailed behind her.

"Why do you care anyway?" he asked abruptly, stuffing his hands into his pockets as they made their way towards the deserted picnic benches. He paused in thought, his tone softening as he waggled his eyebrows at her. "You like him or something?"

"You really are an idiot Adam," she snapped back, irritated. "Matt's...like a _friend _and that school has treated him like shit, he's your mate...you should try treating him like one."

"He's defiantly _not_ my mate."

"Because you've got so many people lining up to take that position."

"I've got mates."

"You mean those other supernatural's that you keep talking about but don't actually see anymore?"

He looked mildly affronted.

"I call them."

"And they answer?"

"Ouch...time of the month?" Christa shot him a withering glare and he chuckled nervously. "Too soon for jokes, huh?"

She shook her head exasperatedly as they past the drinks kiosk, the elderly attendant stooped over the heater inside before reaching the benches. She sat down on what she supposed to be the cleanest one and watched as Adam hopped up onto the table, dumping his bag on the seat.

"Is there a point to this?"

"What...you got something better to be doing? Missing choir practice?"

"Oh my God...I don't do choir anymore."

"Why? You realise you were tone deaf? Come on choir girl...give us a song," she shivered, glaring at him as she pulled at her gloves, rubbing her hands together. He watched her intently, his dark eyes trailing her movements. "You cold?"

"What does it look like?"

Adam smiled ruefully.

"Sorry, sometimes I forget that people get cold," he shuffled off the table, hands in his pockets as he turned away from her. "Wait here."

He disappeared the way they'd come and Christa busied herself with watching the few dog walkers she spotted across the field. It all looked so normal...and she shivered again, this time not from the cold. They're world existed alongside a world of darkness, of monsters...the world of the dead, but people went about their lives in blissful ignorance of the creatures that existed on the dark side.

A foam cup appeared in front of her, steam rising from the murky coloured liquid inside and her gaze snapped upwards to meet Adam's.

"It might not look like it but it's supposed to be tea...Annie was always big on tea; I guess it sort of rubbed off," he offered weakly, hopping back up onto the table.

She gathered the cup in her hands, grateful for the warmth and took a sip.

...It was awful.

Not only did it not look like tea, it sure as hell didn't taste like it either. She was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how rude it would be to lean behind her and throw it away.

"You didn't get anything?"

He smirked.

"Nah, it all looked pretty rank."

She scowled.

"You're a sod."

"Well that's nice, I go out of my way to make sure you don't freeze to death and all you do is abuse me."

"If it wasn't for you I wouldn't even be out here."

He seemed to sober up a little before he spoke again.

"What's eating you Christa?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been _off_ this whole week and the full moon doesn't roll around again till next month, so what's your drama?"

Christa frowned at his choice of words, but reframed from hissing the nasty resort that lingered on her tongue. She hadn't expected Adam to notice that something was wrong; he wasn't the most observant person and for all intensive purposes he was, effectively, _still _a teenage boy. But he was giving her the opening she'd not been able to find for herself.

"I'm actually a little worried...about Matt," she admitted begrudgingly, setting her cup down on the table. It had been bothering her for days; now that she'd had time to think things over she was anxious about the implications of what they'd done. "He turned down _death_; we sent a living person through his door...will he even get a second chance at his door?"

Adam nodded lightly, but didn't turn to face her.

"He'll move on eventually," he said. "Cross over, pass on...whatever you want to call it, that's how it works."

"Just like that?"

"Yeah...he might want to stick around now but the time will come when he'll realise that being a ghost isn't all it's cracked up to be."

It was at times like this when Adam's forty-six years of maturity shone through his veil of teenage awkwardness and bravado. And although his body would never age his mind was old in the ways of the world and when he dropped his pretences and false innuendos; his eyes conveyed a bittersweet depth that would never again match his face.

Christa supposed that Adam really had been given the rawest end of the supernatural deal, the stone-cold reality was that _this _was all there would ever be for him. He'd been cheated out of his death by a monster and forced to exist in the world that he should have been _living _in.

This was still only the beginning for him.

"He'll get lonely," he said sombrely. "He's said it himself, we're the only ones who can see him...if we aren't around he'll go back to being invisible...I can't imagine it's much fun watching the world go round from the sidelines," he glanced down at her. "We shouldn't really be talking about this; there's only so much the living should know about the dead...and _you_ are the only living member of the Supernatural Monster Squad."

"Oh good I'm glad that's catching on."

He chuckled.

"You should see Matt's drawing."

She had seen it, and all it had done was prove just how young Matt had been when he died. He'd made them out to be the sodding X-Men, the good guys...except they weren't; they weren't the ones that would be swooping in to sort out the mess; they were the ones, whether it was intentional or not, that were making the mess.

Adam came much closer to understanding; and they bantered, traded taunts and insults as it gave them a brief escape from the reality of what they were, though it would never be enough to make them forget completely. Christa wasn't sure she wanted to forget and she was fairly certain that Adam didn't want to either; forgetting what they were would lull them into false securities and confidences and when the creature finally caught up with them and lashed out, the consequences would be that much worse.

They were dangerous, monsters that masqueraded as human in a bid to lure their victims into the darkness.

A wolf in sheep's clothing.

"It's funny when you think about it," Christa said dully, picking at the peeling splinters in the wood. "All those things you believe when you're a kid...the monsters under the bed, the things that go bump in the night, you're told to forget about them only to grow up and find out they're all real."

"Fucking hilarious," he deadpanned.

It wasn't exactly ideal for any of them, but they'd tried to salvage what they could of their lives from before the attacks. Christa hadn't expected to be mauled, Adam hadn't expected death to smile at him before it descended on his throat and Matt hadn't expected to be drowned in a toilet stall. But it had happened and they all bore the scars of their misfortunes, transformed into monsters...the creatures of nightmares that haunted them as children.

Christa had woken up shattered and bloody, lying in a narrow hospital bed but she'd walked away with her life, even if the quality of that life had been compromised. Adam had woken up alone, inhuman and disorientated, cold and _dead_ before sinking his teeth into his mother. Matt had woken up to the sight of his _body_, limp and lifeless; slumped over the bowl of a toilet and he'd run from it, devastated and invisible to those around him.

The strange thing was that despite their differences, they all shared _one_ odd thought...what happens next? What happens to those who can no longer call themselves human? The aberrations; the damned...the lost souls? Maybe, if they still deserve such a thing as mercy, they find others like themselves.

It was a painful realisation; to admit they were no longer human, but they tried their best not to be monsters either. Perhaps _that_ was how they earned their mercy? Together they created a different brand of normalcy, one that defied the norms of the supernatural and destroyed the fallacies of humanity. They couldn't say for sure whether it was better or worse but it was different to what any of them had before.

Because of this Adam never asked Christa about who she was before the scars and in return Christa never asked Adam about what life was like before he was changed, it was an unspoken understanding between them. They knew each other as they were now, and there was very little to be gained in dragging up who they had been when they were _human_.

"Do you miss it?"

It was a stupid question, but she needed to know for sure.

Adam raised an eyebrow but played along, despite knowing perfectly well what she meant.

"Miss what?"

"Being human."

He smiled desolately.

"Every day."

The sad truth was that life was not always just, it could be twisted and unkind but the most devastating thing was that despite your misfortunes the world kept on moving even if you didn't. Being something other than human meant you didn't have many choices and that made you value the ones you did have that much more...you could either try to move on with the world or you could allow yourself to be left behind.

It wasn't fair.

"They live in a bubble," Christa muttered, suddenly angry. "They've got no idea what's out there."

"They're only human," Adam said bitterly. "There's no reason for them to know; they wake up from their nightmares...we don't."

And oddly enough that was what united them, despite their differences, their failings and their reservations; they still managed to find enough common ground to create a _friendship? _The teen vampire, the moody werewolf and the bumbling ghost should have been a complete car crash, carnage and frenzied disaster. The dynamic shouldn't have worked; they should have been at each other throats...more so than they were at least...but somehow they made it work.

The abrasive trio, where two of the three had had fought tooth and nail against calling the others their friends, had stumbled across salvation in detention.

They existed on the edge of normality, walking the delicate line between humanity and the shadows, overlooked and forgotten, unnatural and supernatural.

Christa had been cheated out of the things she thought she'd wanted and lived in dread of the next full moon, fearful of what the wolf would do if it ever truly escaped. Adam had been cheated out of more than just his death, condemned to watch the world as it changed around him whilst he remained the same, frightened of his bloodlust and doubtful of his self-control. And Matt...Matt had been cheated out of his life, had his future ripped away from him by a man overcome by his past and he was terrified of what was to come.

"If you want we could go visit Nina and George...they're like you, it might do you some good to network, you know? Go through the werewolf FAQ's or whatever."

A ghost of a smile flickered across Christa's face.

"I don't think I'm ready for that yet," she said softly, staring out across the field. "I've sort of got used to it being the three of us."

Adam raised his eyebrows.

"Three's a crowd Baby."

"I thought it was a magic number," she replied caustically.

"It might have been in the 70's," he said flippantly, waving a dismissive hand. "But times change and you've got to roll with the punches," he turned to look at her, a self-indulgent grin on his face. "We really should go out...the way I see it; it's only a matter of time before you finally give in to the raging horn you've got for me."

Christa didn't look all that impressed at that.

"And here I thought I was covering it up well."

"Nah...It's so obvious it's kind of embarrassing," Adam drawled lazily. "Admit it Christa, we've got chemistry."

She shook her head, patting his knee slowly in an overly patronizing gesture.

"I think you're letting your hormones get the better of you."

_This _was familiar; this was where they found the mercy they probably didn't deserve as monsters. It was simple but at the same time so hopelessly complicated that they both found it easier not to question the nature of their relationship. Adam, rather conveniently, seemed to forget that but Christa vehemently reassured herself that his innuendos came more from forty-six years of virgin bank overdrafts than anything..._more._

"Come on, we solved a sodding _murder _case together, that's got to mean something?"

"We? You seemed more interested in filming crappy home movies on your phone than actually helping out."

Adam ignored that, sliding down from the table to take a seat next to her.

"We could go back to mine?" he suggested lightly, though there was a depth to his tone that implied more than it should.

"Why would I want to go to your dingy flat when I have a perfectly decent room waiting for me at home?"

"You'd have more fun at mine."

She rolled her eyes, standing up from the bench and dumping the remaining tea in the bin.

"You and I have very different definitions of fun Adam."

He stood up, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he leant sloppily against the table.

"Fine; I was only trying to keep your mind off the Trig assignment a little longer anyway," he smirked. "Though you've probably already finished yours...whatever, run on back to your _kennel_."

She smiled scornfully.

"You're a prick...and to think I was this close," she held up her fingers. "To saying yes, but as usual you've blown it."

He shot up from the table as she spun around on her heel and stalked off down the gravel path.

He was fairly sure she was joking, but there was a small part of him that held onto the idea that she might have been serious.

And he wondered if he'd be able to redeem himself.

"Christa..." he called after her as she walked away from him. "You're right...I was a prick," she hadn't turned around. "But I'm willing to put aside all those _cultural _differences between us and in the spirit of co-operation I'll even drag a chicken on a sting all the way to my place, think you could find your way then? Christa?...Christa?"

_You're waking up  
><em>_A part of me I've never known  
><em>_And I've never felt so invincible  
><em>_What took you so far away? _

_You hold the rights I'll never own  
><em>_And I've never felt so alien  
><em>_What is the use of it?  
><em>_We're ok: it's nothing  
><em>_It's all chemistry of a car crash._

Lyrics courteous of Shiny Toy Guns.

A/N: Review?...I would also like to thank all those that have reviewed my previous stories; your comments are much appreciated.


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